A new study shows that men and women will one day receive equal pay for equal work! Unfortunately, it's estimated that day will arrive in 2059 - 42 years from now, which might as well be never.
Today is Equal Pay Day, the date that symbolizes how long women have to work to make what their male counterparts do in the previous 12 months. To put this another way, for every dollar a man makes in North America, a women makes about eighty-five cents.
This is not a new topic (in fact, we've been talking about it for an astonishing 75 years), and there are lots of government initiatives that seek to close the pay gap all over the world. But I refuse to wait another 42 years for this issue to be addressed. Clearly, whatever we have been doing, we are doing wrong.
Pay inequality is not something that can be fixed by legislation alone. Pay inequality must be addressed by managers, _working within the budgets and control they already have_. And there's no way on earth it should take until 2059.
Doubt this? Let me tell you the story of how, when I ran the global digital marketing team at SAP, I eliminated pay inequality among my direct reports in less than two years. As is true for many large companies, during annual review season (usually winter/early spring) managers are given a budget for salary increases, typically 3-5%, depending on your industry and the health of your company. Within this budget, you must provide both merit and increases to match inflation (ranging between 1.7-2.5%, depending on locale). Of my leadership team, almost half were female, and I wanted to see how salaries compared to those of the men. Not surprisingly, there was inequality between people with similar responsibilities and experience, though not as grave as a full 15% shortfall (salaries are also adjusted based on geography - a loaf of bread in Silicon Valley does not cost the same as it does in Walldorf, Germany). Nevertheless, we had unexplained differences in the amount men were paid vs. women.
So I did something radical. As a manager, I took responsibility for correcting my teams' pay gap. I showed my analysis to HR. I explained that over the next two years, I was going to address this problem by using my existing payroll budget. I gave everyone the minimum inflation increase, modest merit increases where warranted, and the rest of the budget I plowed into bringing womens' salaries up to that of their male counterparts. I did this within the budget I had. I made it a priority. And no one had a problem with it.
Can we please stop waiting for some magical day when government or business will somehow come up with the tens of billions of dollars required to do this at scale? No one is ever going to write that cheque. Instead, if you are a people manager who actually cares about this, you should do the same simple analysis, figure out where you need to be, what you have to work with, and fix pay inequality on your own team. If leaders take personal responsibility and action over the next few years (even the next _decade_ is an improvement) there's no way we're going to have to wait until 2059 for women to be paid fairly for the work they do.
If you're a manager, pay inequality is _your_ responsibility. Now, go fix it.

Part way through the American election campaign, I realized I was living an illusion. I hadn’t seen a single piece of pro-Trump content on social media, despite his surging popularity. Since I wasn’t seeing this content in my feeds, I was pretty certain pro-Trump people weren’t seeing any of the Clinton content my network was sharing, either.
This is no mere quirk of software. Now that there’s a President-Elect Trump, this lack of a wider, shared perspective online has fueled a raging debate. It may have influenced the American election; some are going so far as to say it threatens democracy itself.

We build our own digital walled gardens, and we like them. “Filter bubbles” (the idea that we have like people in our networks, share like opinions, and become unwittingly cut off from differing ideas) aren’t new.

People have been talking about the “social media echo chamber” for years. A June of 2016 research paper showed that not only do filter bubbles exist, they tend to pull their members to more extreme viewpoints in a confirmation bias “loop” (the more often you see something, the more true you think it is).
This groupthink isn’t all self-imposed. Technology allows us to ignore what we don’t want to see, but in many cases it’s now actually doing this for us. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has strongly denied that Facebook’s personalization algorithms (wherein you click on or share content on a particular topic, and the platform serves you up more of the same) had anything to do with shaping or polarizing public opinion ahead of the U.S. Election.
For now, we’ll set aside the irony of his claims that a site advertisers spend billions on to influence buyers has, in fact, no influence.
After November 8th, many people discovered, to their shock, that there were two, completely opposed, Americas. 62% of U.S. adults get news from social media, and they’re being algorithmically separated into communities of interest, with largely no access to the moderating effect of other opinions
This does not make for civil discourse, this makes for civil war – opposing factions that don’t know about, understand, or care for differing perspectives. It’s also not something that bodes well for national unity or peaceful co-existence between winners and losers, and it’s further complicated and entrenched by the fact that fake news is an epidemic on Facebook in particular. A recent Buzzfeed analysis found that the most popular fake election-related stories received more shares and overall engagement than stories from reputable outlets like _The Washington Post_ and the _New York Times_.
When I was first enchanted by social media over a decade ago, the promise was the democratization of opinion; the ability to be heard without the need for a broadcast license, the opportunity for governments, companies and communities to connect directly, without interference. Little did I think we would end up more isolated than ever, thanks to software features that were initially intended to give us more of what we liked, but which have driven us instead into blind alleys where we have no exposure to differing viewpoints.
Mark Zuckerberg is not allowed to say that Facebook is simply a channel for sharing, that it doesn’t influence. The social network isn’t a modern-day equivalent of Canada Post. It is the biggest and most influential media company the world has ever seen. Over fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan so presciently noted that the medium and the message cannot be separated. They are inextricably intertwined.
Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have a civic duty to understand how deeply they influence what we know; they must change their algorithms to provide all of us with a more balanced view of the world (whether we like it or not), and they must address the very harmful proliferation of propaganda and fake news. We cannot allow the innovators of Silicon Valley to hide in their own filter bubbles and ignore what has just happened. There’s too much at stake.
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A long time ago, a colleague of mine at the startup I founded said one sentence that changed my work life. When you're considering peoples' intentions and, _"You have to choose between malice and ignorance - always choose ignorance. Most people don't have time to be malicious."_
What he meant was that people are generally too busy to mess with your plans. If things are not going the way you'd hoped, if your project or initiative is not being supported as you might like, don't assume that others are trying to derail you. They probably just don't understand, mostly because they're too busy doing their own jobs to worry about yours.
In the corporate universe, this position can be seen as radical at best, näive at worst. In 2013, shortly after I joined the company from the startup world, SAP's Board of Directors asked my team and I to undertake a massive transformation of our digital customer experience. Initially, many project participants were very busy pointing out which parts of the business would fight us, where (even inside our own team) people were actively working to block progress, and which senior stakeholders were going to make unreasonable demands that we would be forced to accommodate. But guess what? most of these "bogeymen" never really materialized. Where people were "fighting" us, I found groups who were not familiar with our objectives and approach for delivering the best digital experience in the world and making it easy to do business with us online. Where others were "blocking progress", I found teams that didn't understand where they fit in or how to contribute effectively. Where senior executives were making "unreasonable demands", I found individuals with specific needs who didn't realize how putting our customer at the center of our experience design would necessarily require a change in how they presented their business online.
_"When you have to choose between malice and ignorance…"_
Three years later, the ONE Digital Experience (1DX) Project has been enormously successful. We have delivered a completely redesigned and simplified digital experience (mobile first!) that is making is easier to do business with SAP online. This has involved everything from reducing our websites by 82%, cutting social channels by half, completely re-designing our information architecture, simplifying the view of our portfolio, and creating new experiences for our customers, prospects, developers, and most recently, online community. Nevermind the backend, where we are developing pages 75% faster at 20% of the cost, have unified the tech platform, giving us greater than ever visibility into digital contribution to revenue, and are getting ever-closer to single sign-on for our entire ecosystem.
It was an enormous project, and I can honestly say a big part of the reason we have all succeeded is because we assumed the best intentions. We didn't go out with fists raised, ready for a fight. We went out knowing that we mostly needed to educate people about the power and importance of the digital experience in today's marketplace. Most importantly, we went out believing that we all had the same objective - success for the company and success for our teams.
My big takeaway after three years in the corporate world? You always come out ahead if you assume the best intentions. Most people want to live up to your expectations.

A few months ago, I started thinking about the fact that I consume virtually all my online video with the sound off. Whether I'm in the back of a taxi, on a plane waiting to take off, or amusing myself while waiting in line at the coffee shop, I have become incredibly adept at figuring out what a video is about using only pictures (90% of the time, on my phone).
Turns out that I'm not alone. A recent DigiDay article, surveying multiple online publishers, indicates that up to 85% of video consumed on Facebook is watched without sound (and Facebook itself is now offering free captioning for paid video placements). So what does that mean for anyone who ever needs to produce content (ie: all businesses, everywhere)? It means a new/old form of storytelling - one that marries visuals with subtitles and graphics. And when it's done well, this can turn a 30-second clip into an unparalleled tool for getting your message across.
Unlike silent films, in which actors typically used over-the-top gestures to convey drama, sadness, etc., static in-between "intertitles" (yes, I had to Google that) gave broader context or assisted with transitions between one scene and the next. This is not that. Online video is infinitely richer. With animations, super-cuts, subtitles, graphics and a bag of other tricks, visual storytelling today is more dynamic and evocative than it has ever been. And publishers (that's brands like SAP, too) who don't start thinking about what their content looks like with the sound off are missing what their audiences want - silent movies.

Where are all the women in tech? There are, of course, very high profile female executives who are great examples to all of us (Ginni Rometty, Marissa Meyer, Susan Wojcicki are just a few). But what about the many thousands of strong female leaders in tech whose every move is not covered by mainstream media? People like Daniela Lange, who leads product development for systems that process payroll for over 80-million individuals worldwide, and Satya Sreenivasan, leader of a team of developers working on the next generation of medical analytics software, who speaks passionately about the creativity and artistry that goes into writing code. These women are exemplars, and we need to make an effort to find and share their stories; each one has the beauty of being both extraordinary and tangible.

The excuses around why we don’t hear more from these women are generally one of the following: “we can’t find any women” or “women don’t self-promote as much/as well as men”. Controversial? Perhaps. My experience has been mixed: some years ago, a dear (and sadly, recently departed) friend asked me to help program a new conference series. Today, the highly respected and successful Social Shake Up events have a near 1:1 ratio of men to women. My conclusion? Conference organizers or journalists who “can’t find any women” are simply not doing their homework. Conversely, while working on a writing project just before taking my current role at SAP, I began interviewing startup CEOs. The good news? 100% of the men accepted my interview requests. The bad news? A disappointingly low 30% of the women did. Successful women are important role models, and as such, I believe self-promotion is actually a responsibility.
The examples offered to young women and men shouldn’t be a choice between Sheryl Sandberg’s level of success or nothing. We need to hear the voices of successful women across the spectrum – to see ourselves in their journeys and to inspire young women everywhere to pursue technology at school and in their careers.
So, if you’re a woman in tech – step up and tell your story. And if you’re someone who tells stories about the technology industry, make sure you do your research, because, as Daniela Lange puts it so eloquently, “There is nothing inherently masculine about making software”. Many women are doing it, too.
_Starting in May 2015, the SAP News Center began publishing “Spotlight on Women Leaders at SAP”, an effort to showcase the many exceptional female leaders at SAP._

You need to know who you are, otherwise it's impossible to change.
Sounds like a leadership slogan, but it's also a perfect way to sum up how the environmental movement got started in North America in the late 1960′s and early 70′s. It wasn't a great political announcement that kicked things off. It wasn't a damning report on a toxic disaster. It was one, simple photograph. In 2013, we'd probably call it "the ultimate selfie":

Earthrise, taken by William Anders. Nature photographer Galen Rowell called it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."

Earthrise, the "big blue marble" (it's almost impossible to imagine this) was the first time that humans had truly seen ourselves. That we'd identified our home, Earth, as a place, a thing. That sudden self-awareness was not only a near-religious experience for many of the NASA astronauts who experienced it, but also a powerful realization for those left behind. So powerful that it's widely credited with kickstarting the modern environmental movement.
I was reminded of this moment in time (not only a lesson in the power of self-awareness, but also of what motivates people to change - but that's another blog post) this morning while scanning Twitter. NASA has, over the last few years, been releasing stunning photographs taken by the International Space Station. This morning I came across an image of Cape Cod in the United States.

Cape Cod in the United States, photograph from the International Space Station

I see a lot of these photos in my Twitter stream as they're shared by NASA via social media and then shared and re-shared by a lot of the people I follow. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people see them every day. Far more than the number who saw Earthrise in the glossy pages of Life Magazine, where it was published in 1969.
Which got me to thinking. One could argue that these images, from all over the world, have the potential to be just as powerful, if not more so, than Earthrise. They're up-close, personal photographs of our home. We can see things we recognize - both natural beauty and the impact of our activities. They're real, in no way abstract.

The lights of London, by astronaut Andre Kuipers

As we find ourselves in what some scientists are calling another extinction event (this one sometimes called the Anthropocene, after its cause) we are and will be faced with tough, life-altering choices. (A friend recently did an assessment of his consumption. The good news was that his household required 50% less that the average Canadian home. The bad news was that if everyone on Earth consumed at the same level, we'd need six more planets to provide the necessary resources.)
I can't help but wondering if these very personal images of our home planet, and what we're doing to it, shared more widely than ever before possible thanks to digital media, will help motivate us to make the dramatic and difficult choices we need to.

First up, just to get it out of the way, I'm going to lay out my _bona fides_ on this topic. In 2006 I started a specialist consulting firm with no funding and no partners in a new space that most people had never heard of: social media. I had no marketing budget and I needed clients. I (along with many of my peers at the time) used what is now called thought leadership marketing to create valuable content, raise our profiles and generate leads. The company I started with nothing in 2006 went on to employ dozens of people and deliver multimillion dollar annual revenues for over seven years because of the thinking we did and the ideas we shared.
Therefore, I think it's fair to say I know something about thought leadership marketing.
Today I see large companies (including my own current employer, SAP) identifying the obvious value of earning attention by creating compelling, relevant content. The genius of thought leadership marketing is that by positioning yourself as a leader in that particular area, you can effectively "own" it as the expert brand with the best thinking, the best ideas and, of course, the best products or solutions. GE, as an example, has done this well with the Internet of Things.
So what are people doing wrong? Pretty much the same thing they did wrong with social media. What we in the industry referred to as "build it and they will come" - simply, creating elaborate new web communities (that mostly end up dying) instead of using simple platforms to publish your own thoughtful content and joining conversations that already exist.
I firmly believe this is a comfort zone thing - everyone knows how to build a website, but very few people feel at ease engaging in existing conversations and publicly expressing (and debating) their POV as a representative of their company. It's also, truthfully, a digital agency business model thing: there's lots of money to be made in website builds and buying media to drive traffic, much less in helping skilled client staff share their views online.
So what do firms need to stop doing? You need to stop building online thought leadership "hubs" or "communities" on new patches of real estate. Media companies, staffed entirely with content experts, struggle with creating compelling engagement on their existing online properties - brands that create net-new space in this model are mostly hopeless at it. (I also think brands tend to measure success with a very low bar. We should be comparing ourselves to media - that is, after all, our true competition for attention online.)
You need to start identifying your internal thought leaders and follow the model that has worked so many times in the past - get them writing, syndicate their content, get them speaking at conferences (where many industries are sorely under-represented), engaging as themselves online where the important conversations are already happening. Corporately, you can create valuable content and background material that adds to these conversations, and share it.
Yes, all of this is harder - but it actually works. DEATH TO THE THOUGHT LEADERSHIP WEBSITE - LONG LIVE ACTUAL THOUGHT LEADERSHIP.

When I ran my own business, I had a solid, tried-and-true, 3x pipeline. That was absolutely, 100% the math. For every $3 in prospective sales, we would see $1 in booked revenue, and this was the case for years. Until it abruptly wasn't. For whatever reason, the ratio started to shift, and we began closing less than 30% of deals.
Clearly it was time to move to a 4x pipeline. If we were going to maintain the same amount of revenue annually, we needed to increase the number of opportunities were were pursuing. So that's what we did.
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Let's park this parable for a moment and jump to an article I came across last week. It turns out that a popular pharmaceutical contraceptive doesn't work well for women who weigh more than 165lbs (75kgs) and doesn't work _at all_ for women over 176 lbs (80kgs). The article explained that the reason for this was something known as "non-linear pharmokinetics". Essentially: taking y of a drug = x of the drug in your bloodstream. However, for some drugs, taking 2y does not = 2x in your bloodstream, it may still be 1x or even less, depending on your metabolism.
Which is why this particular contraceptive doesn't work for women over a certain weight. Because of non-linear pharmokinetics, you can't take enough of the drug for it to work if your body mass is above a certain amount.
And this is the connection I began to think about as it related to our sales pipeline long ago. Even though we created a 4x pipeline, our revenue did not respond accordingly. Because it turns out that there's something very similar to non-linear pharmokinetics that happens in sales. According to a Sirius Decisions study released this year, B2B companies with 3x pipelines perform much better than those with 4x pipelines - by about 32%. The reason is explained as quality - when you increase pipeline, and lower expectations of productivity, we encourage sales professionals to reduce quality. That's certainly what we saw in our own 4x experiment, which didn't do a thing. We ended up refocusing our efforts on the r_ight_ clients, instead of _all_ the clients.
The reasons for these two different but similar phenomenon (put more of x into the system, which doesn't generate linearly more y) is the MULTIPLIER. It's an additional variable that we, in our quest to see simplicity where it sometimes is not, forget about. The good news is that these unconsidered variables in other circumstances can sometimes actually generate more value, especially in a knowledge-based business. You can read more about that in this fascinating article by Daniel Rasmus about the Serendipity Economy.
Do you have any examples of this from your own work?

In my new role at SAP, I am part of the team that puts together the amazing SAP TechEd events. This past week I had the great pleasure of kicking off TechEd Las Vegas (next week it will be TechEd Amsterdam, and early December we'll be in India for TechEd Bangalore…) I can't possibly do this tremendous event justice in one short blog post (hundreds of hours of educational content, 6500 live attendees, over 20,000 online, the events reach a total of over 200,000) and many others have posted their own thoughts and personal highlights. However, I would like to share a couple of small, but very interesting "Ah-HA!" moments I experienced over the course of the event - one of the things that makes attending great conferences and speaking with smart people such a joy. (think the Serendipity Economy).
HAVE THE IPHONE/IPAD TRAINED US TO CUSTOMIZE UIS (USER INTERFACES)?
I remember reading a study in 2007 that talked about how Napster had shown many millions of Internet users that the web was not only cool, but useful. That the music-sharing site had, in fact, trained us to perform transactions online, creating comfort with behaviours that would support the rapid growth of online shopping as well as social media. In the context of a discussion around SAP's acquisitiondevelopment of Fiori, an apps-based user interface technology, Sam Yen (SAP's global head of design and user experience) pointed out that, similarly, the iPhone/iPad has trained us to expect the ability to customize UIs. This is, of course, a relatively new space with an enormous amount of potential, not only to make the user experience better/more intuitive, but also to gather an additional layer of data (not only what you did, but how you set things up to best do it).
THE "DIGITAL LAYER" IS A GIVEN AT CONFERENCES - BUT NOW ATTENDEES WANT TO TAKE THEIR CONTENT HOME
This was a really interesting one. It's been a given for a while now that conferences must have robust digital layers to meet attendee (and online lurker) audience expectations. No surprises there. But what happens when attendees have an amazing augmented experience via a highly useful mobile app? When they share pictures, make comments and connect with others - and then want to take that content home, or into another platform? During a lunch with the SAP TechEd app leaderboard winners (those who had used the event app the most) we had a lively discussion about how the content these folks had created could be exported from the mobile into a desktop ("If I could even get a Word document…") or online experience ("What about if we could bring the content into an SCN forum thread?"). It was a great question that I had never heard asked before - and I expect it to come up again as the lines between online, offline and IRL continue to blur.
Finally, this is my favourite picture of all from the event, and I would like to know just how one comes to own their own personal SAP t-shirt cannon?? Sign me up!

So, two small (but interesting) discussion points from a rich, lively event that had thousands of attendees. If you attended or watched online, what did you come away with from #SAPTechEd? I'd love to hear in the comments below.